The Tower
Got to put this machine on the heads of these crazy people so they don’t shit in the street or whatever. Nine to five type work. Strapping them down, cutting off their clothes, checking them out, making notes, then putting this machine on their heads. Some work for a doctor! Half the time I wish it were me getting the machine. So many fucked up things travel your mind when you work in The Tower...fixing the world.
You see we don’t like people shitting in the streets. Had some sort of convention awhile back, deciding once and for all we don’t like that kind of thing. We don’t like a lot of things, turns out. Talking to yourself and being rude, smelling bad and scratching your privates, not understanding the world, or simply be dull, all these things and a million more get you the machine.
I threaten my wife with it. I’d fry her brain in a second if she tried to take me down. She could too, because she knows I keep that mad man Charlie in the garden shed. Jesus, if they only knew that every night I shared a highball with a tier 1 madman. They wouldn’t even bother with the machine, they’d just throw me off the bridge. There would be a lot of confusion though, and things would be crazy for a few hours, so I’d probably have time to fry my old lady’s brain, and she knows it too.
Charlie is out there all day sharpening my shovels and writing his masterpiece. After dinner I take two glasses filled with ice and walk down the groomed paths. Under a fold of moss I keep our bottle. This week we have a fine nearly century old Molman, and Charlie has been so delightful. Just last night he even told a– well, almost a joke.
He speaks non stop about murder and revolution, but I can veer him away at times, to muse about love or music or the stars. He says one night he’ll run me through with my very own shovel, then go inside to do my wife, load up my guns in the wagon, and take them down to the marsh, where he says a hundred men will be waiting. He says he’s been taking to them and that they are all ready—but I seriously doubt that. I can see why people don’t like the machine and all, but to think of Charlie gathering them all together and getting them on the same heinous page as he, is beyond all reason.
I root for him of course. Every night I hold a glass and the bottle in my left hand, and a glass in my right hand, and when I open the door I sort of expose my belly for him. He never runs me through though. He never will.
No, I’ll keep strapping those fools down and blasting their brains, and all that street shitting will just fade away. Hell, someday they even find old Charlie here, and they blast his brain, and they’ll throw me off the bridge, and there’ll be no more of this nasty business we’re up to. After all, if you’re getting rid of street shitters but you leave me and Charlie around then you got some problems of you own.
Tonight the moon is out, in a half sleepy recline, beneath and blanket of fluffy white cloud. It is raining, or sprinkling quite hard, but I stay outside, even though I could take refuge in the long seedling greenhouse, and hear that tremendous sound from in there. I could stay out of the rain, hear that calamity playing upon the roof, smell the moist earth, and walk that sparkling moonlight detour nearly all the way to the shed.
But no, I stay in the rain. In fact I slow. My feet are boulders, plopping down one after the other with terrible effort. I am drenched. I look down at the glasses of ice and they are filled with water. I turn them out onto the grass, and then I drop them completely. I pull the cork from the bottle and venture a swig, but I gag and heave with nausea. I want to fall into the mud gathering on the side of the path, but I move forward. Why would I open this door!
Inside the garden shack the shovel fly true, and Charlie raises his eyes into mine. I’m holding my guts in with my rain drenched evening shirt. And for the first time in my life, I’m truly hopeful for the future.